Whatever I was going to write about flew out the window when I discovered mason bees are using our new house.
Honestly, I never expected this to work so quickly. First, the photos I managed to take!
These bees know exactly where they are going. They land in a tube and quickly disappear.
They may come out and turn around–which I figured out is because they had successfully packed enough mud over the last egg and are now ready to lay a new egg.
My brother-in-law sent us the house for Christmas.. The instructions were to mount it in a morning sun location about 5 feet high, preferably under an overhang. The spot I chose back on April 1–in order to take a photo of it–doesn’t have an overhang and I had thought about moving it to under the 2nd story deck.
I didn’t think to check the house for three weeks. By then, they were using it! I didn’t want to touch the material in the tubes and wasn’t sure it was mud until I saw the little particles of mud on the flat board below the tubes.
Imagine how many trips it takes when carrying blips of mud the size of a large pinhead!
Though the house isn’t full as of this week, I have the opportunity to make a second box. I have loads of hollow-stemmed dogbane stalks, a plant sometimes called Indian Hemp. The stalks are almost woody and very fibrous. I can’t even snap them off at the end of winter; they need to be cut.
I’ve been tossing these and my Joe Pye Weed stalks along the back of the garden for a few years for the bees, and will now have to check if they are actually being used. If not, I will find a container and cut them for more houses. This 5-7 feet off the ground requirement might be a firm need for mason bees.
About mason bees:
I know more about native plants than bees. On a recent trip, I picked up two two fabulous books published by The Xerces Society, which I knew of from identifying butterflies and their planting for pollinator guides. These books are available on their website.
100 Plants to Feed the Bees is strictly a plant guide and the other–Attracting Native Pollinators–has sections on pollinator biology, taking action, basic bee identification and creating a pollinator-friendly landscape. All useful! And I was please to read the forward by Dr. Marla Spivak, whose TED talk on Why Bees Are Disappearing is fabulous! (sad, but fabulous)
Aside: If you have not watched this 13 minute talk, do it! Her talk explains our current bee crisis so succinctly that I posted it on every one of my nature blog’s Trees for Bees posts.
Back to the bees. Mason Bees are in the large genus Osmia. About 150 members reside in North America, but only 27 of them are east of the Mississippi. You Great Plains and Westerners have many more, so get those houses out!
Quoting from the description: “…usually lack conspicuous markings or hair bands. Most are metallic, and many are brilliant metallic green, blue or even purple.” (Purple!) “They commonly visit flowering shrubs and small trees in the Rose family, especially fruit trees in orchards. This fact has made Osmia important pollinators of fruit crops such as apple, cherry, and plum.”
We have plenty of wild cherries in my suburban area, and ‘everlasting roses’ seem to be planted everywhere around here. But I bet the member of the rose family our local mason bees go after is blackberries. They are very plentiful–and as I confirmed that doing a search, the Rose family popped up as being one of the six most economically important crop families.
Yep, we need those mason bees.
Kudos on your bees.